Marry Me
by amyelewis
Summary: A fortunate meeting in the departure lounge of LAX between a newly qualified doctor and an illustrious Architect, does fate have other plans? Inspired by Train's Marry Me. AH/AU.
1. Chapter 1

_This is a new story I've been working on for quite some time now. Inspiration came from the music video for Marry Me by Train - if you have not watched it I suggest you do so soon - it's marvellous. This will be a multi-chapter story and I'm not sure if it's good or if it will pan out well in the end but hey, woman can try right. It is rated T for now, but it may change at a later date. Once you've read this short chapter I'd love to hear what you think - whether you like it and continue it?_

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><p>At half past two on a very warm Saturday afternoon, the departure longue of LAX was packed – bustling with tourists in straw hats, shorts and sunglasses looking very burnt, who sat with magazines in their hands, fanning at their faces, and the occasional gentleman in a dark suit and patterned tie, rushing towards their gate – their black luggage rolled noisily along behind them.<p>

Behind a layer of Plexiglas, city names and times shone in a luminous green.

'_Paris Charles de Gaulle – Departed.'  
>London, Heathrow – Proceed to Gate 13.'<em>

A short way away a beautiful lady sat, her auburn hair gleaming in the sunlight, an indignant snarl of sorts displayed on her pretty face.

'_Seattle, Sea-Tac – Delayed.'_

_Typical,_ she thought to herself, shaking the glass before her – a little too hard, so the one, solitary ice cube rattled annoyingly against the side of the glass. She pushed it away, ordering the gentleman behind the bar to bring her something a little stronger, before pulling out a laptop from her first bag and a wonderfully developed blueprint from the other – spreading them both on the bar before her she produced a small, but deathly sharp, pencil from behind her ear.

She looked at the barman; he looked a little under twenty-two, probably a college student – just younger than her – with the unmistakeable bleached hair of a Californian. With an expert flick of the wrist, he screwed the lid back onto the wine bottle before carrying over the red zinfandel she had asked for, setting it down just to the left of her on a white, folded napkin.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, madam?" he asked, his white teeth gleaming a little.

Shaking her head, no, she passed him a ten dollar bill before erasing a short pencil line that just did not look right where it was situated. Popping the pencil into her mouth – her teeth chewing on the wood – she swivelled, just so, in her sear so she could watch the gradually empting longue.

Over the rim of her wine glass, her emerald green eyes looked back up towards the board that displayed each and every flight that was to depart. And still, her flight sat at the bottom.

_Seattle Sea-Tac. Delayed. Now 16:00._

Onto the polished, wooden bar she placed her ticket, followed by her cell and took a lasting gulp from her glass.

"Is anyone sitting here?" she heard quietly from beside her elbow.

"No, not at all," she replied, removing her laptop bag from the seat next to her and looking up at the stranger with a slight smile.

"Thank you," he turned slightly in his chair and extended his hand towards the young woman, "Carlisle Cullen."

"Esme Platt," she returned. Taking his hand, she looked up at him. He wore a shirt of pale blue, two of his buttons undone; his Adam's apple sat just delicately above the straight edge of his collar, with a pair of beige slacks. His blonde hair was professionally slicked back around his temples, a slight fringe brushing softly against his forehead. A pair of lovely grey eyes took the centrepiece of his face and he carried a slightly large, black briefcase. He caught the attention of the barman and signalled for two drinks.

"So Esme Platt, you're off to Seattle too?" he wondered, taking a fleeting look towards her ticket that still sat on the bar.

"I am."

"Well," Carlisle said, picking up one of the two tumblers before him and nudging one towards her, "here's to the wait."

They clinked their glasses together and Esme took a gulp of the amber coloured liquor and felt a burn in the back of her throat. She looked towards the stranger and saw that his eyes were devouring her work, he took in every line, every description before flicking down to her signature on the bottom left of the paper.

"Wait, you're Esme Platt? _The _Esme Platt," he asked with amazement. "You designed a house for my father on the Calawah River in Forks just last year."

Esme remembered that house. The man in question had told her he wanted wood, glass and for it to be modern and left her to her own devices. Money was no question. He had told her that he had a son, who was in his final year at Harvard studying medicine, and a daughter, who was at Julliard. This was her first house, her first commission, after she finished Princeton that fall but he assured her that he had been informed she was a protégé, brilliant. She had been just twenty-two when she had finished the blueprints and had passed it on to a very happy gentleman – the construction started one month after and was finished by that spring with thanks to some very effective builders and an unseasonably warm winter. She had never seen the house again, but thanks to it she had been catapulted into greatness and her work could be seen throughout the Olympic Peninsula and beyond.

"You're George's son? I should have recognized your accent – London. How has he been?"

"Just great. He talks about you a lot, he's so incredibly thankful for the 'beauty that built my dream house.' I live with him now, actually. I work in Forks General – I'm a doctor."

"Yes, I remember him saying – he was so proud of you. How is my baby looking?"

Carlisle smiled, it could be said that fate was pushing them together. "Better by the day."

'_This is a call for all passengers for the service to Sea-Tac, Seattle. All passengers can now board at Gate 12.'_

Folding up the blue paper quickly but carefully and placing her laptop back into the case, she turned back to Carlisle, who was already holding his briefcase in one hand and their tickets in the other.

"So what brought you to Los Angeles?" he asked as they joined to queue of other passengers travelling to the North West.

"I had a job interview; I could ask you the same question?" She replied as she gave the attendant a ticket and turned back to wait for him.

"I was visiting a old college friend of mine," he pressed a hand against her elbow to help her onto the aeroplane before handing the ticket stub to the second attendant who promptly showed him to his seat. "Do you think you'll get that job?"

"I do not know," her red hair cascaded down her back and a small sliver of skin appeared from beneath her white blouse as she lifted up to place one of her bags in the overhead locker. "It's a great opportunity, but I love Washington."

Carlisle knew that he was standing in the gangway, gawking at her, and he could not bring his legs to move. A handful of annoyed passengers pushed their ways past them, a few hitting him with their baggage, none of them expressing their apologies or even saying 'Excuse me.'

"Is this your seat?" he asked. When she turned around and nodded, he once again extended his hand. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Esme Platt."

After brushing his thumb slowly over each of her knuckles, he released her hand and walked ten or so rows back, settling himself between an elderly lady and a teenager. His heart skipped a slight beat when he saw her look behind her – she found his eyes and her lips pulled up at the corner.

He had fallen hard.


	2. Chapter 2

'_Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to the 16:00 flight to Seattle, Sea-Tac International. Your flight time today is two hours and thirty-eight minutes.'_

Carlisle had been born in England, to a pastor father and a mother who was a paediatric nurse at the nearby hospital. When he was seven, his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer – he, his sister, Rosalie, and his father had watched their beloved mother, and wife, die. He had watched, defenceless, as his mother's lovely flaxen hair had fallen out – and at that moment he had made a promise. That in the future he would help other – others in her condition, others in pain, others who needed help, and from that moment forth he was no longer defenceless. When he had turned twelve, his father had put their modest family house up for sale and uprooted the family to Seattle, Washington. It had always been Carlisle's mothers dream to live surrounded by trees, someone remote and undiscovered. They had lodged in a small home, in one of the small suburbs outside of the large city while his father had found work and he and his sister a school, and when Carlisle was just about to enter Medical School – aged eighteen – they had relocated to the opposite side of the Olympic National Park, and set up roots in Forks.

When Carlisle had been accepted into Harvard he was still young, and he started to question things about his life. He questioned whether, or not, he was really ready, whether he was good enough to embark on this journey, and most of all why his mother was not there on his graduation day. He blamed God. He was the only scapegoat Carlisle could find, and he ran with it. His father had worked for over forty years of his life teaching his children, and all the children of his parish about Him, but Carlisle could not, and did not want to, see it. It was not until he was twenty, and in his second year of medical school, did he find Him again. He had watched for two years a lot of families, patients, come and go and he finally understood what he did not before – God was what people clung to during their times of need, and he himself clung to Him from that moment forth.

Carlisle sat back against the uncomfortable seat; the aeroplane had reached its pinnacle height and was currently cruising quite steadily. The elderly woman had fallen asleep beside him, her head against the wall and her face angled towards the window. When the captain had come over the loud speaker, allowing all electronics, Carlisle had popped his headphones into his ears, reached for the packet of unsalted peanuts from the seat pocket before him, and taken out a dog-eared copy of _A Farewell to Arms_ from the front pocket of his briefcase. He began to read;

'_In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun...'_

He struggled to concentrate; he closed the book definitively and pressed it back against his chest. His eyes touched the ceiling, his flaxen eyebrows puckering slightly. He hated flying. He was not an aerophobe, not at all – he still had a boyish wonder of how aeroplanes actually did work – but he did hate them; he had fairly long, gangly legs, he harboured a small disliking of being squashed, and the air conditioning always played havoc with his lips.

His eyes flickered ten rows down, and touched on the back of her chair, he then closed his eyes – his eyelashes creating a crescent moon of shadow against his cheeks as they were delicately lowered. There was something about her that made him want to take her into his arms and whisk her away. He had always had great respect for someone who had done great things with their lives. He had only been in love once; it was while he was at Harvard with a maths major named Sara. She wore thick rimmed glasses that sat perfectly on his puckered cheek bones, her hair was raven, and poured down her back in waves, she dressed in vintage and was always carrying an old book – be it poetry, prose, non-fiction, drama, classic, or French. She was everything to him for a time; he still remained slightly fragile, and still wore the scars of her deceit.

He had buried his head into his work after they had broken up; he was twenty-one and one year away from graduating. He relied heavily on his two roommates; Emmett, a burly third year in Neuroscience who now worked in Los Angeles, and Jasper, his quiet Southern friend who had majored in History and now lectured American History at Harvard. His sister had moved to New York that summer and with his free time, Carlisle had gathered as much money as he could so he could go home and visit his father.

When he had been told one fall that his father had hired an architect to build his dream house, Carlisle was shocked. He knew that his father was relatively well off in terms of money, but it just did not seem right. Carlisle had returned to school before he had seen any plans for the new house, but after regular phone calls and hearing the excitement in the older man's voice he knew that this was what his father had needed – something to take his mind of his loneliness.

"_You should see the architect, son. Brilliant, and as pretty as a peach." _He could remember it, clear as day. He had been sitting at the desk in his room, his socked feet up on his windowsill, the warm air fanned in through the open window. A book concerning genetics was propped up against his bare knees, his notes were strewn everywhere across his room, pinned to the wall, and his cell was cradled by his ear against his shoulder. _"It is huge, wood based. There's so much light! Oh, you'd love it Carlisle, you and Rosalie. This would have been your mother's dream."_

"Cullen," Carlisle heard. He opened his eyes slowly, blinking when the garish light of the cabin hit his retinas; he turned his head slowly to the left and saw that smile again. She had tied her hair up in a loose bun, quaint diamonds glittered from where they sat in the lobes of her ears; she had such a lovely face. She was holding something out towards him in her hand;

"The drink I owe you."

He took the small plastic bottle, filled with the warm, white wine they served on an aeroplane and closed his palm around it – treasuring it close to his heard. He just managed to stammer out a 'Thank You' and she smiled – he loved her smile – her lovely, cherub lips pulled up over straight, gleaming white teeth before she turned on her heels and walked away down the aisle, two loose strands of caramel hair curling around her neck.

The old lady beside him had awoken, she had began to read the magazine that protruded from the pocket before her which told her which movie she would be watching and which duty free perfume she could be buying had she been on a medium-haul flight. The teenager to the left of him had taken off his shoes and was currently playing on a handheld games console, its volume on low. There was always something quite innocent about those younger than him. Of course, at times he could not see it. He had matured fast in his life and now at twenty-three years he had not only his life but others in his shaky hands.

'_Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now beginning our descent into Sea-Tac International, please make sure your seats are upright, your seatbelts are buckled and your tray tables are safely secured.'_

All around him people were returning to their seats; older gentlemen who had gotten up to stretch the cramp from their muscles and people who had made a quick dash to the restroom before descent. Carlisle heard a number of tables being upturned and the chair before him suddenly shot upwards. The cabin shook slightly underfoot, a whirring noise could be faintly heard above the humdrum chatter – the wheels of the aircraft were being lowered; ready for landing.

With a pastel sweet in his mouth, Carlisle turned to the right and watched as the wheels touched down in Seattle; Puget Sound was just faintly visible through the early evening mist that hovered over the horizon. He was home. A few passengers started to clap, while some more stood up to collect their baggage from above their heads before the rush. Carlisle waited for the young boy by his side to steady himself, after being seated for over two hours, on the back of his chair before straightening himself. He pulled at his shirt in a self conscious manner, trying to straighten out the creases with the palm of his hand.

With a hand curled in the pocket of his beige slacks, the small wine bottle still within his fist, and his briefcase clasped in the other he looked towards the front door – hoping to get a glimpse of her. He saw her, hidden in amongst the squash heading towards the door; her caramel hair gleaming in the dim light of the cabin.

He walked out of the cabin, out of the tunnel that connected the aeroplane to the arrival longue – his leather loafers squeaking on the polished floor and off into baggage claim. The belt was already moving, the first items of luggage were falling from the shoot and making their way slowly around. He stood in one of the few empty spaces and placed his briefcase between his feet; he looked around slowly and found what he was looking for on the opposite side – talking animatedly into her cell phone. She still had her hair up, and she had placed a black, woollen cardigan across her shoulders – she used her hands a lot when she talked, he noted. As he watched her, she looked at the conveyor belt expectedly, ended the call and placed her phone into the front pocket of her leather handbag and picked up a small case from the belt.

Checking it was hers, she lifted the handle and walked out of the airport – and Carlisle just had to watch her leave. He looked slightly at the floor, dejection and sadness clouding the blue hues of his eyes. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted his case, and with his car key in one hand and his luggage in the other he walked out the way that she had went.

Carlisle loved Seattle, a lot more than Los Angeles where he had just came from. He loved the dense greenery of the Northern state, the forest was his companion and as he stepped out into the cold air it reminded him why he called this place home. The rain.

He stood at the curb and picked up his luggage ready to step into the road and make a brisk run for the parking garage when he saw something that made him stop. A few metres away, her back turned to him, stood Esme Platt – once again she was talking down the phone.

"Yes, okay, Charlie," she was saying, "No I understand. Okay, bye."

She turned around to look about for any free cabs, her lovely eyes were despondent. One small part of him worried who 'Charlie' was, but the larger, braver part of him was already walking towards her; his leather shoes splashing in the already large puddles.

"Are you alright?" he asked, coming up beside her.

"Oh," she turned, and looked at him – her lips pulling up a little half-heartedly. "Yes, I'm fine. My brother-in-law cannot come to pick me up."

He looked down upon her, lifted up his hand and squeezed her shoulder. The words flew from his mouth;

"Let me drive you home."

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><p><em>I'm sorry for not thanking everyone personally for the lovely reviews that you gave me for the chapter - this was written in the gap between a genetics exam and an immunology exam, so my mind has been a little out of it for the past week. I'd have loved to make it a little bit longer, but I have a few plans for where I want this to go and I want to get there reasonably quickly. Anyway, yes, <strong>thank you<strong> for the past reviews and I'd love to hear, once again, what you think of this chapter. _


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